Originally Posted by
Bonkey
That's somewhat insulting. Pretty much all NATO members would be perfectly able to do the same and many have done on countless occasions. Not least the Israelis and British special forces have examples in the last 50 years.
BONKEY, 10/10 for loyalty to brand, 1/10 for reality.
The U.S. is unique in the amount of effort that can be put towards CSAR activity. The cost in equipment and personnel is enormous on all of these types of missions. Israel is good at clandestine activities, and also apparently getting lots of experience at attacking civilian population centres, these are not the skills necessary for what the CSAR crews do. I doubt that any other country would politically support such actions. Once upon a time, there was SAR capability in the UK, air-sea-rescue, etc, but that was long ago. Even within the maritime rescue that the UK has today, it is a civil program, not so much armed.